One of my favourite writers, Donald E. Westlake, mostly left the SFF field for the greener pastures of crime fiction after the 1960s. He was very successful there.
The Risk Profession, first published in 1961, is a fun SF novelette and one well worthy of our continued attention.
Another guy who appreciated Westlake was my friend, Gregg Margarite, who narrated it for LibriVox back in 2010.
The plot, a murder mystery, concerns an insurance investigator who makes a trip to the asteroid belt to investigate the death of an asteroid miner.
The Risk Profession
By Donald E. Westlake; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 4 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 17, 2010
“The men who did dangerous work had a special kind of insurance policy. But when somebody wanted to collect on that policy the claims investigator suddenly became a member of… The Risk Profession.” First published in Amazing Stories, March 1961.
Here’s a |PDF| made from the publication in Amazing.
[Thanks also to Wendel Topper and Lucy Burgoyne]
Posted by Jesse Willis